True Colors

“Vivi Ann? It’s Roy.”

She was instantly alert. Glancing at the clock, she noticed that it was 8:40 in the morning. She’d overslept again. The first lesson of the morning started in twenty minutes. “Hey, Roy. What happened?”

“The appellate court affirmed his conviction.”

The words hit her so hard she couldn’t breathe. “Oh, no . . .”

“Don’t lose hope yet. I’ll file a petition for rehearing and a petition for review with the Washington State Supreme Court.”

Vivi Ann struggled to believe in that, but hope had become a slippery thing, hard to hold on to.

“And . . . uh . . . don’t bother going to the prison on Saturday.”

“Why not?”

Roy paused. “When Dallas got the news about the decision, he went a little nuts. They’ve got him in solitary for a month.”

“Did he hurt anyone?”

Roy paused again, and in the silence, the answer came loud and clear.

“It’s killing him,” she said. And me, too.

“It won’t help him to start fights.”

Vivi Ann heard Roy’s words, but all she could think about were her visits to the prison, sitting across the plastic glass from Dallas, who was dressed in his orange felon’s jumpsuit, and the things he’d told her. The way his cell door popped open automatically four times a day, with a buzzing, clicking sound, for meals and one hour of exercise; the way it felt to look out from the yard and see grass through razor wire; the way the prisoners congregated by color and how you had to stay with your own kind but he was half of two groups and belonged in neither; the way “the girls”—guys dressed in as close to drag as their jumpsuits would allow—trolled for takers while bullies looked for victims; and the way it felt to believe you’d never see the stars again, never ride a horse at night, or hold your son.

“Will anything help, Roy?” she asked, hearing Noah’s voice come through the baby monitor. As always, he called out for his daddy. She closed her eyes in pain. She couldn’t help wondering if one day Noah would forget about his father and go on without him. Or would he always remember, and always keep reaching out for a man who wouldn’t be there?

“Don’t give up yet,” Roy said.

“I won’t.”

She couldn’t imagine a moment when that would be possible. As much as believing in hope hurt, not believing would hurt even more.

Vivi Ann hardly noticed the changing of the seasons. As the golden summer of 1996 slid slowly into a cold and rainy autumn, she struggled to act like her old self. To keep moving forward. Aurora showed up on an almost daily basis to make sure that she was rarely alone, but even her sister couldn’t help. Vivi Ann felt as if she were trapped in a cold bubble, suspended. Every day she woke up depressed, alone, but she rose anyway and went about her daily chores. She gave lessons and trained horses and hired a new ranch hand. Thoughts of Dallas came and went, hurting both on arrival and departure; she gritted her teeth and didn’t slow down. Every night when she finally crawled into bed, she prayed that tomorrow she’d get good news about his appeal.

She knew that people were worried about her. She could see it in their sideways glances, hear it in the way they whispered as she passed. Once, their gossip and concern would have mattered to her. No more. In the eleven months since Dallas’s arrest, she’d learned a little something about optimism. It was an acidlike emotion, eating through everything. To believe in hope meant she had to hang on to that alone. There was no room inside of her to care about anything else.

On this cold, brown late November evening, she gave her last lesson at four o’clock, fed the horses, and returned to her cabin.

There, she found Noah on the rug in front of the fireplace, playing with a pair of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures.

He looked up at her, grinning gummily. “Mommy,” he said, opening his arms.

Vivi Ann felt a spasm of guilt. The truth (which she’d told no one and never would) was that the sight of her son’s face was almost more than she could bear these days. That was why she paid this thirteen-year-old girl to watch him during the afternoons. Every time Vivi Ann looked at Noah, she wanted to cry.

“How was he?” she said, reaching into her pocket for some cash.

“Great. He loves Tigger.”

How could Vivi Ann not have known that? “Great.”

Through the living room window, headlights shone, illuminating everything for a moment.

“My mom’s here. See you Monday after school?”

“You bet.” Vivi Ann watched her leave and then stared down at her son. At almost three and a half, he was the spitting image of his father, right down to the long black hair. Vivi Ann hadn’t been able to cut it. “Hey, little man,” she said.